


Lessons

by lisabounce



Category: Protector of the Small - Tamora Pierce, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Dark fic, Gen, smackdown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-11
Updated: 2011-06-11
Packaged: 2017-10-20 07:51:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/210459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lisabounce/pseuds/lisabounce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lessons learned and bitterly so.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lessons

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to notalwaysweak for the beta.  
> Nothing is mine.  
> Disturbing content and themes.

(There were stories of the Dominion Jewell. There were always stories of the Jewell. There were stories of the Jewell that asserted that it was always lost for a reason. That the gods always take back what they have given tenfold.)

He called her to his rooms in the district headquarters, not long after her return from Scanra.

She bowed low, dropping to one knee, hand resting on the hilt of her sword before the high-backed wooden chair. A simple thing, like all within the district headquarters, the only touch of luxury the two small tapestries on the walls, the quality of the china on the sidetable and washstand.

He made an annoyed sound in the back of his throat. "Please, Lady Knight. At ease." Kel stood, hands linked behind her back. "You realise that by your actions, you have made a bad situation worse? The Scanrans claim no knowledge of Blayce's activities and are contesting our claims and it doesn't matter that they're lying through their teeth, given that Blayce was a Gallan who, it might be added, was trained in a more than nominally Tortallan city and whose creatures, terrible as they were, were causing at least as much damage to the Scanran forces as they did the Tortallan... I have the Scanran delegation claiming that the entire debacle was a Tortallan plot, complete with lists of the Scanran peasants who died as a result of the actions of a Tortallan-trained mage."

(How the Gallan Empire Was Built but never how it fell, a land in name only these past three hundred years, though the Gallan lordlings and chieftans and council say otherwise.)

Her face was studiously blank. She waited impassively as he continued.

"The Gallans, meanwhile, view incursions across our northern border with a rather justifiable concern, given our history of aggressive foreign policy and their rather lax control over their provinces adjoining Scanra and Tortall, especially given the fluidity of Scanran clans, many of whom, only six or seven years ago, freely acknowledged those kinsmen of theirs living both here and in Galla. They, of course, view any suggestion that we might attempt to destabilise those clans with... justified suspicion since both the Drell River War and their discovery of tin and their discovery of substantial tin deposits some three miles east of the border."

(The Siege of Tyra, saved by Miache and Zefrem. And never spoken of now, that the marshland and estuaries surrounding the city supported farms that grew only nettles, though the ground was fertile)

She inclined her head, face still blank and calm, and he sighed.

"I will explain, then. I hold the Dominion Jewell."

(a mage-king bound the very fibres of the land together when regicide would have been attempted and never spoken of, the famine that followed)

She nodded.

"And, though it, I hold the power of the land. The land dislikes the presence of warfare. Every season the war continues, is another year it will take for it to recover in peacetime."

(Norrin and Anj'la of Maren brought a Golden Age and never since has there been mage granted mastery from Carthak, from the City of the Gods, that was born on Marenite soil.)

She nodded again.

"Our current situation would have been distinctly advantaged by the continuing presence of Blayce's machines throughout the fighting season, as Scanran peasants are a supserstitous lot and were deserting in droves whenever one of his devices was linked with a war band."

(That as much as a ruler used it, it used its ruler)

"You're very young, Lady Knight, and I remember what it was like to be at war at your age, and the demands of duty wear heavily... But you are, next time, to ensure that your sense of duty does not win out over your common sense. Men like Blayce ought be allowed to exist at times, so long as they further our goal, which is that the fighting on Tortallan soil be brought to a close in the shortest possible time. The land does not care if takes the deaths of some, only that the blood stop being shed here. That is all."

She bowed her head again, calm as a lake reflecting the sky, no more emotion showing in her face than there was in his voice.

(That not one of the Jewell's holders had ever been called kind. Not Anj'la, not yet the heroes of Tyra and they all grew hard as stone over the years of their reign.)

"You are dismissed, Lady Knight."

She, although not given to tears, cried bitterly that night in the privacy of a room granted her not by virtue of her rank but rather her sex, and rode out the next morning to take her new command.


End file.
